Founded 1917 | ||
Central Grocers Cooperative, founded in 1917 as "Central Wholesale Grocers", is a retailers' cooperative based in Joliet, Illinois, near Chicago. It distributes both brand name and private label goods branded as Centrella and Silver Cup Value Buy to about 240 member-owner grocery stores in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. According to their corporate page it's 400 stores
It supplies several grocery stores in Indiana and Illinois including: Strack & Van Til (acquired in 1998), Town & Country, Key Market, and Ultra Foods. It also purchased a number of former Cub Foods locations in the Chicago area, some of which it operates as Strack and Van Til and Ultra Foods. Fellow co-op Certified Grocers Midwest merged into Central Grocers in 2008. Prior to 2009, the company was headquartered in Franklin Park, Illinois.
As of 2013, it was the seventh largest grocery cooperative in the United States, with over $2 billion on consolidated annual sales.